Art Direction

The Kindr Campaign, a social justice campaign for Grindr.

OBJECTIVE.

Kindr was a content marketing campaign that featuring social media assets, video content and a microsite. The objective of the campaign was to promote Grindr’s new Community Guidelines, centered around protecting users from discrimination and harassment within the app.

PROCESS.

This campaign literally launched overnight with limited resources and a small, scrappy team. I worked alongside the lead art director and senior copywriter on this project, with the three of us conceptualizing and executing the campaign from start to finish. The concept was to create videos featuring Grindr users and influencers discussing five topics: Sexual Racism, Body Shaming, Trans Inclusivity, Fem Shaming and HIV Stigma. Together we dreamed up a “Modern Soapbox” set, which was inspired by Harvey Milk’s own soapbox-style political speeches. We developed a color palette to reflect the “new rainbow,” inspired by human skin tones, each color assigned to one of the topics.

RESULT.

Over the course of 3-4 weeks leading up to the release of the episodes, we released a social media teaser video each week and managed to garner over 10 million impressions on our teaser content alone. In the episodes, which live on Grindr’s YouTube channel and on the microsite, each of the 30 users shared incredibly powerful, many times heart-wrenching and altogether inspiring stories about their experiences with discrimination within the LGBTQ community. Several press outlets, including Paper Mag and Advocate wrote about the campaign before it even launched. Within the LGBTQ community, important conversations about these issues had been ignited, and many wrote to us about how much the episodes had positively impacted them.

ROLE.

I served as the junior art director on the campaign. Since we had a lean team for this project, I had to wear several hats. I designed the “Kindr” logo, provided both art direction and project management, filmed and edited teaser videos, scouted and chose the photographer, helped cast talent for the Soapbox interviews, and served as the stylist on the shoot. It ended up being one of the most life-changing and inspiring projects I’ve worked on to date.

Digital

Digital Design work for Grindr Growth Team.

OBJECTIVE.

The objective for these campaigns is to advertise Grindr’s subscription service and encourage sign-ups for the service. The campaigns run within the Grindr app as an interstitial mobile banner or an inbox message.

RESULT.

The result of these campaigns were increased subscription sign-ups and increased revenue that helped the Growth team meet and surpass its monthly revenue goals. Subscription revenue increased by 73% for the first half of 2018 compared to the same time period in 2017.

ROLE.

I was the lead designer on the project but worked closely with the art director and copywriter to develop strategy, copy and the right look and feel to achieve our vision for each of the campaigns. Depending on the creative, I used a combination of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and/or After Effects.

Branding

Brand identity for the restaurant Miyabi Uni.

OBJECTIVE.

Miyabi Uni was a new Japanese restaurant in Torrance and its partners approached me with a need for a logo and brand identity, and quickly.

The client asked for a symbol of the sea urchin that would represent the Japanese heritage (incorporating the Japanese character for “miyabi”), while being modern and memorable. Their most important objective was that the logo would be easily recognizable as their brand.

PROCESS.

I researched the meaning of the Japanese character they gave me, and used Chinese calligraphy to paint a few versions myself before we settled on a particular typeface to carry the character. I also hand-sketched several versions of the sea urchin before taking the design to Illustrator to design a cleaner, simplified and modernized sea urchin.

Taking their brief, inspiration images, and previously rejected designs into consideration, I was able to mock-up four initial versions in two days, eventually perfecting the final logo from their favorite concepts.

RESULT.

The client was so happy with the logo that they tasked me with designing their menu, business card, website and social media assets. The result is a branding system that is consistent throughout their digital presence and on-ground through prominent signage at the restaurant.

ROLE.

I was the sole designer on the project, working directly with the four partners as they raced to meet their restaurant launch deadline. I used Adobe Illustrator for most of the project, but used InDesign for the menu layouts.

Poster Design

Type Specimen Poster (Concept).

OBJECTIVE.

This was a conceptual type specimen poster meant to showcase one typeface of our choice. I chose to showcase Bodoni URW, one of my favorite serif typefaces.

PROCESS.

I went straight to my sketchbook to start the brainstorming process, sketching out a few initial concepts. I eventually decided I wanted my composition and colors to contrast the typeface’s classic feel in order to provide an almost jarring feeling to the viewer, grabbing their attention and helping them zero in on the beautiful structural details of the type itself. I digitized the concepts that reflected this idea, and then selected energetic, bright color schemes I felt were the opposite of the more luxurious and subdued neutral-toned settings Bodoni is usually seen in.

RESULT.

The final result was a poster featuring the “B” turned on its side in a 3D format, with bright colors and simple shapes to help focus on the content itself.

ROLE.

I was the sole designer on the project from beginning to end, using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.

Typography

Type Designer Magazine Spread (Concept).

OBJECTIVE.

This was a conceptual magazine spread done highlighting influential type designer Zuzana Licko. Her achievements as a woman in design, as well as playing a role in revolutionizing digital typography, was very inspiring to me as a female myself.

PROCESS.

I played with a few different concepts, each one highlighting an image of Zuzana and one of her funnest typefaces, Oblong. The layouts I played with explored geometric shapes and bright, contrasty colors layered in a way that was reminiscent of many of the Emigre cover designs she was involved in.

For the body copy, I made sure to optimize for the most legible settings for tracking and leading, as well as the justification and hyphenation settings for the text columns.

RESULT.

The final spread that was chosen was the simplest one of the bunch -- really bringing attention to what mattered most: Zuzana and her beautiful work.

ROLE.

I was the sole designer on the project from beginning to end, and used a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. I can't take credit for the photo of Zuzana — the original photo was taken from a biography of Zuzana and her husband, Rudy Vanderlans, on AIGA.com. Read the biography here — they're great!